It's Just a Bite
by jmantarget
Summary: When Harry gets bit in the Chamber of Secrets, something changes inside him. After all, the bite of a basilisk has to be magical somehow, right?
1. In the Chamber of Secrets

It's a weird feeling, having a footlong fang slip into your arm. In actuality, for its size, it slid in surprisingly easily; maybe too easily, but that's beside the point. Oh, it hurt. Of course it hurt. It's no different than a knife or a quick cutting curse stabbing into my arm. On the other hand, I did a lot more damage back. That bloody basilisk didn't know what hit it. A quick sword strike to the brain left a near instant death, with only its muscle spasms to keep it moving.

The funny thing about basilisk venom is what it does; it doesn't just stop your heart, or erode your muscles or anything that a normal snake bite does. Basilisks just have to be all special, and being a snake the size of a bus just isn't enough. The feeling of the venom was weird, like a vacuum pulling on me-no, it was pulling on my magic. It was draining my dry, and there wasn't a thing I could do to stop it. It's a terrifying thought, having my magic pulled bit by bit out of me. It's terrifying in a chilly way, like being stranded outside in winter-you can't really do anything. When I finally pulled the sword out of the roof of the snake's mouth, the fang plunged into my arm stuck. So now I have a dislodged basilisk fang stuck in my arm. This is just great. I barely feel it when I pull it out, it just hurts too much.

All I could feel was the venom, and nothing else mattered. I could feel the drain turn into a pull turn into a rip. It hurt. It hurt like nothing else I have ever felt. It hurt more than breaking my arm in my first year, even more than touching professor Quirrell hurt. Nothing even compared to the drain's pull. I could hear the rush of the water to my sides, feel the cold of the air on my skin, and see the grey stone of Slytherins statue, but none of it mattered to me. The venom was all encompassing, I lived in the pain now, that is, until until I saw the fiery orange hair of one Ginny Weasley lying in front of me in an unconscious heap next to Tom Riddle's diary. Ginny's my mate's sister, and friend, so she is my friend. I protect my friends.

I crawl over to her and look up to the near-solid face of Tom Riddle, a gleeful smirk reaching all the way to his warm eyes. I can see how everyone believed in him, with that kind of natural charisma and self confidence. Even knowing what he was and what he would become, he felt trustworthy.

"You've lost, Harry. In just a few short moments, I will be whole and Lord Voldemort will return to power, " the young Tom said at a near whisper. "All thanks to this one young girl, one you can't save. Know that as you die down here, alone."

I can feel myself getting angrier and angrier at his words, each one biting into me as the basilisk did before. I want to hurt him like he hurt my friends, and I can't let him get out of here. He comes from the diary, so I have to get rid of that. I don't have my wand, but I do have a large fang soaked in the most potent venom in the magical world, so I do the only logical thing: I set my shoulders, lunge towards the book, and plunge the fang straight into the middle.

In an instant, Tom starts screaming and writhing in place, and the diary screeches with him in a high pitched, almost childlike voice. In his chest a black, smokey hole had split him open, just as I had stabbed the diary. I knew that just as the venom had pulled at me, it pulled at Tom ten times harder. With the dang still lodged into the diary, I look up at face of the future Dark Lord. The shift in his eyes as that warmth turned to shock was unquestionably satisfying. As the screech of the book became quieter, so too did Tom fade until both completely disappeared. The last look on his face was one of immense terror.

Despite the quickly growing pain, I slowly slump over to Ginny and collapse onto my good arm. She can't be dead. She just can't. I won't let her die, no matter what. I try my best to pull Ginny over my shoulder and carry her, but I can't even close my hands into a fist to grab her. Everything just hurts too much, like my soul is being pulled out of my arm. Can I even do this? I'm losing any hope of pulling her out of here. It just hurts, like a ice cold spike being plunged constantly into my arm and pulled out,getting colder after every stab. I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die! I don't want to die! I don't want Ginny to die, or Ron, or even professor Lockhart. Please, anyone! Come help us! I can't let my friends die here!

Suddenly, I hear a gentle flapping, and Fawkes quietly drops down next to me. What is he doing? I can see his eyes tearing up, is he mourning for me? A single tear slowly trickled down his beak, and hung on the tip for only, a second before dropping right onto the bite wound.

Relief. Pure relief from the drain bled into my wound and closed it up. It felt infinitely better than before. I could feel the slight tingle of my magic returning, like when your arm goes numb, and the numbness goes away. I could see and hear and feel and focus again!

Something just feels wrong though, like I'm empty. My magic is back, but it feels like something else is gone. The greys feel a little duller and the sounds are blander; but I'm alive, and I can save my friends. That's what's important to me right now. I can deal with this feeling later.

Fawkes turns away from us and motions his tail feathers towards us to grab onto. Didn't Hermione say that Phoenix's have the ability to carry heavy objects? Well, it's my only option. I scoop up the Sword of Gryffindor and the sorting hat, grab onto Ginny, and take hold of the tail feathers.

Like magic, everything immediately became weightless; Ginny, the sword, the hat, everything. Without any apparent effort, Fawkes flapped his wings and began to soar, pulling us all forwards towards the exit of the chamber. We soared through the cavern and pipes leading up to Ron and the professor, stopping shortly to pick them up and continue flying up to the surface.

With a soft landing into the girl's bathroom, we landed. With the danger gone, and us safe, I finally collapsed and saw tunnel vision until everything went dark.


	2. Waking Up

The first thing I notice when I wake up is the fog condensed on the windows. It must be early-that's what it does in the morning in our dorms, thought I don't remember the beds being this lumpy in our rooms. The second thing was the sterile smell of the air. I know that smell anywhere. I was obviously in the Medical Wing with Madam Pomfrey. Blinking away the crust under my eyes, I look around the room and try to make sense of what happened.

Ok, so I was trying to stay alive from the giant snake and I-I killed it. Bloody hell, I killed it. But it bit me. How am I alive? I try to pull my arm up to take a look at the wound, but it's bound in some sort of cast, and I can't move it at all. I can't move it! What's wrong with my arm? Did the snake bite ruin it? Am I going to lose my arm!? I start to squirm and shake, trying in vain to get up and do anything. Flailing my other arm, I knock over the glass of water placed on the nightstand beside me. With the quiet taps of frantic shoes on stone, the thick oak doors are thrown open and in comes the Madam Pomfrey herself, nearly startling me off of the bed.

"Oh my, Mr. Potter, you should be resting. Stop squirming this instant and lay down," the medical witch said with a firm voice. I can tell there will be no arguing, so I quickly get back to laying down.

"See Madam Pomfrey, I'm down," I say in my most sincere voice. "Laying and everything". She doesn't seem to buy it from me, and comes closer to the bed. With a quick and precise flourish of her wand, she casts some sort of red charm on me and nods to herself.

"Mr. Potter, you're lucky that I don't tie you down to that bed. Behave yourself in here. Now, how do you feel?" she asks, first sternly, then gently at the end. The sudden change in voice throws me off, and I'm stuck for a moment before I can respond. Seeing my lack of speaking as a reluctance, she tries to nudge me on, saying "It's alright. Everyone is safe, and nobody was permanently harmed." Ginny! How could I have forgotten about her? Is she alright? Pomfrey says that she is, and I have no reason to believe otherwise.

"I don't really feel like anything. I can't feel my arm though, and that's what made me freak out earlier. What's wrong with it?" I ask, speeding as I progressed until I was spewing out words in a frantic rush. Madam Pomfrey pauses for a second before answering.

"Your arm is just fine, Mr. Potter. You kept on twitching and grabbing it while you slept, so I took the liberty to numb it. Now that you are awake, your natural magic should start to fight off the charm until it fades in a few minutes. Now what I want to know is how your arm got in the shape it is right now? Under the cast is the ugliest black circle I've seen in my years as a healer. I expect you to explain that" she says calmly.

"I was down in the Chamber of Secrets with-" I start before she interrupts.

"You were in the Chamber of Secrets? This needs to be brought to the headmaster's attention immediately!" Madam Pomfrey practically shrieks. My ears are practically ringing. "I'll call him in, so you wait for just a few minutes before you tell us what happened." She leaves to the hallway, and I see a bright white light come from under the door. Within a few minutes, Professor Dumbledore walked through the door, his gray robes flowing behind him gently from his quick gait.

"Ah, Mr. Potter. Awake at last, I see? I tend to see you in this room a lot, don't I?" Dumbledore rambles with a slow, happy voice. I can tell that he is happy to see me awake, and it lightens the tenseness of the room a touch. Turning towards Madam Pomfrey, he says "Now, you said to come urgently, but you didn't say why. What seems to be wrong?"

With a start, Madam Pomfrey says in a hushed voice "Mr. Potter says that he got his injuries in the Chamber of Secrets. I don't know if he is telling the truth, but-"

Cutter her off, the headmaster says, "Poppy, it's alright. I've already spoken with the others who woke up. He is telling the truth; he really did go to the chamber." He turns towards me. Within an instant, the lightness of his eyes is gone, and I can tell that he is being serious. "Harry, nobody else knows what happened in the chamber itself other than you. Can you tell us what happened down there?" And so I did. I told the two of them of finding going to the girl's bathroom with Professor Lockhart, having him turn on us, the cave in, finding Ginny, and the fight against the basilisk. When I described the basilisk, Madam Pomfrey went white in shock and Professor Dumbledore straightened up with a stern face. I tried to keep calm throughout this, but by the end, even I was sweating. Even thinking about that snake gives me a cold sweat down my back.

By the end of my tale, feeling started to come back to my arm. I could move it again! I gave it an experimental flex, and I lifted it to my face to see the mark. It's as ugly as Pomfrey said. It looks like a deep black, as if burnt. The surprising thing is that the mark isn't deeper. I could have sworn that the fang went deeper. With a reflexive shudder, I think about the bite. Seeing my looks of confusion, Dumbledore interjects.

"With what you've told us, and what we see, I think that there is only one real explanation. After the basilisk bit you, fawkes cried onto your arm, right?" he asks. I respond with only a nod. Where is he going with this? "Phoenix tears are a magical thing, Harry. Very, very old magics. Even by magical standards, they are revered for their extraordinary healing properties. Even a bite as bad as a basilisk is no match for a phoenix's tears. Though we aren't exactly sure how it works with basilisk venom, we do know that it works." It feels like a weight is lifted off of my shoulders. I'm going to be alright, and everybody else already is safe.

With that, Professor Dumbledore left for his office, and Madam Pomfrey left me to my business. She said that I will be out by tomorrow, "just in time for the last classes of the year before the end of year feast" as she said.

The hours rolled by steadily, as I read the multitude of get well cards and ate box after box of sweets. In the morning, Madam Pomfrey let me go to my dorm to rest for classes the next day. As soon as I stepped into my room, I was tackled by a streak of fiery red. Ron had apparently seen me first. Immediately I was bombarded with questions, and I answered them as best I could. I made sure to be especially careful when I mentioned parts with Ginny. Eventually, he had to go to class, and I had to go to bed.

As I take off my glasses and lay there, drifting off alone in my room, a sudden whoosh resounds through the air. With a flash of light and a health amount of fire and heat, a red blur appears in the middle of the room. What? Is that Fawkes? That can't be right. I really should get more sleep. I turn away from the sight of the bright red bird, and try to nod off again. With a mighty flap and a loud creak, Fawkes lands on my bed, right next to my legs. I give a loud scream in fear, but luckily nobody was there to hear it. I guess Fawkes really is there. What for, though?

I quickly reach for my glasses and put them on, trying to see why the phoenix was there. That's when I see it. There, clutched in his talons! It looks like a messy brown, um, thing. I reach out my hand to grab it, and Fawkes quickly hands it over. The thing quivers in my hands

"Oyy, watch where you're grabbin'!" the mass says. It quietly grumbles to itself, "Why did I have to be the one to do this?" Like an inflating balloon, the brown thing props itself up, showing itself to be the sorting hat. With its black eye-cuttings, it looks at me and says "So, can you take this damned sword out of my brim for good this time? It's yours now. I don't want it."

Oh boy.


End file.
